Friday, October 24, 2008

Week 14

Well, we have been busy! I haven't really had much time to post. The weeks have just been flying by! School is pretty streamlined by now. We still have Bible and Catechism and Latin at breakfast. Then, after they dress and all that, we tackle math and writing. I felt like we were getting through math too quickly, usually in less than 10 minutes, and that was causing problems when we had lessons with a more difficult concept or just more work was needed on longer addition and subtraction problems. I think Kaden had gotten used to math only taking a few minutes and he was really becoming frustrated when it took longer. Math does take time and the further on he gets, the more time it will take. So I decided that we would do math for 30-40 minutes every day. That gives us plenty of time to do both Saxon and BJU and Flashmaster and use manipulatives for story problems. It's been about three weeks since we went to this schedule and math is much improved, as are our attitudes to math time!

Spending so much of our table time on math necessarily limits what else we can cover in that hour, so we are tackling copywork (for penmanship and grammar) and learning cursive. They still work on Click-n-Read for phonics and spelling, but I am hoping to move that to our afternoons and listen to one read aloud to me while the other works on the computer.

We have been pretty regular about our after lunch read aloud time. That is going well. After quiet time, we read history or science or seasonal picture books and have art time. This is going very well!

Two areas for improvement are tracking the books they read and keeping the house tidy. They are getting really lazy about cleaning up after themselves and it makes me feel like the whole house is chaotic and I can't do my housework with all their clutter everywhere. They will finish their 100 books poster from Scholastic by the end of the month. They have enjoyed it so much, I want to find a simple way for them to continue tracking their progress.

We are having a lot of fun with fall crafts and our artpak projects. Soccer is going really well, even if it is time consuming. I'm looking forward to getting together with a friend to sew each week. Best of all, we are making it to the gym a lot and it is such a treat, not to mention that I am in the best shape of my life!